The S&P/TSX composite index finished at 12,740.47, up 40.10 points, or 0.32 per cent. Five of the 10 sub-indexes advanced, led by materials, up 1.28 per cent as the price of gold rose, boosting producers of the precious metal.

Industrials led decliners, falling 1.92 per cent largely due to a 20.55 per cent in the share price of SNC-Lavalin, which fell to $38.43 after the Montreal engineering giant warned that its stalled projects in Libya will take an $80-million bite out of its earnings for the year, about 18 per cent.

The price of crude oil slipped $2.01 to $106.55 US a barrel, while gold gained $13.50 to $1,788.50 US an ounce.

U.S. consumer confidence levels shot up in February to 70.8 from 61.1 in January, according to the Conference Board, blowing away expectations for a rise to 63.0.

“It’s giving people a little bit of confidence that the economy will gradually improve and the recent run over the past four months in the stock market was not a fake out,” Irwin Michael, a money manager at ABC Funds in Toronto, told Bloomberg. “With good earnings, more mergers and acquisitions — because we see a lot of that happening — we expect the market to be higher than where it is now at the end of the year.”

The confidence numbers managed to overshadow durable goods orders for January, which declined four per cent, when analysts had expected a drop of one per cent. Also on Tuesday, the Case/Shiller housing price index also showed a disappointing 1.1 per cent drop.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 13,000 on Tuesday for the first time since May 2008, rising 23.61 points, or 0.18 per cent, to 13,005.12. The Nasdaq composite index rose 20.60 points, or 0.69 per cent, to 2,986.76.

“Amid all the recent attention on the Dow’s quest for the 13,000 level, an equally noteworthy fact is how incredibly stable the index has been recently. So far this year, only two sessions have seen moves in excess of one per cent (Jan. 3 was +1.5 per cent in the first session of the year and Feb 3 was +1.2 per cent after the jobs report),” notes BMO Capital Markets deputy chief economist Douglas Porter. “In recent days, it has barely moved, recording two days in a row of less than two-point moves. This contrasts heavily with last summer and fall, when daily changes of two per cent to four per cent were the norm. And we won’t conjure up memories of late 2008, when daily swings of more than six per cent were not uncommon.”